Reporting on games as I play them
Arathi Highlands is the first contested zone that an Eastern Kingdoms Horde quest-taker will encounter, meaning that Horde and Alliance players of the 25-30 level range could really start encountering each other here. That "could" is a critical word, as during my brief time in the zone, I scarcely saw a single player of equivalent level running around it doing quests, seeing more higher level players digging around the troll campsite for archaeology finds. After playing through the zone, I could see why.
Arathi Highlands was originally a pretty boring affair. As a member of the Horde, you fought some remnants of the Syndicate, some ogres and their troll friends, some Alliance holdouts in castle Stromgarde and eventually captured a legendary sword, eventually dropping back in much later to awaken a resting titanic princess to kill. Oh and there were some pirates in the bay that needed your help.
None of that has changed. Sure there's another Horde outpost so you don't have to travel quite as far to turn in your quests, but while there has been some minor story development, Arathi Highlands would be the first of the Eastern Kingdoms zones that you could handily say was boring. First of all, the fact that there are Syndicate quests remaining is just silly, especially without the context of the Alterac Mountains and their Syndicate problem no longer explained. They're now just some random dudes without any real story. The ogres and trolls also just come across as random dudes to kill. The whole Stromgarde situation is just as ridiculous now as it was then with three opposing factions in very close quarters not fighting each other. And while I do appreciate that the ancient evil no longer requires a lot of backtracking and hunting down rare elites with wide paths and coming back from the Badlands, I also think that it's just not that interesting.
The only thing mildly amusing about the highlands is the brief section with the pirates and that's just a mild amusement. It's not a bad area to do some trade skill grinding with a good amount of ore in the hills and lots of beasties for leather and cooking, but there's nothing really resembling an interesting story to drive a quest-taker forward. A mild revamp to the zone doesn't make it any more interesting or better. When a Horde player is done, at least they get an easy free ride to Hinterlands, which was previously a very obnoxiously difficult zone to get to the starting quest village of.
Links:
- Game website
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